Well, it only took me two years but I finally got a sigil to work for me. I've been obsessed with sigils ever since I read Grant Morrison's "Pop Magic" two years ago (one of the texts that got me interested in becoming a magician). At the time they seemed like a very easy thing to do. Morrison said they "always worked". I got a few books on them, read some websites, took notes. And then I tried one. And another one. And another one. Nothing.
I wasn't sure why they weren't working. I wasn't sure if I was launching them wrong or if it was because I couldn't forget about them afterwards... I even had friends launch them for me and still no dice. Frustrated, I quit trying them and moved on to something else. But a few weeks ago I saw Morrison's speech at the Disinfo.con event and it got me inspired again. So I decided to try my hand at sigils once more... Just this time, I was following Micheal Beautriax guy's advice that "If a system doesn't work for you, create your own".
I've posted stuff on here before about writing things into existence and shit like that. The magicians who inspire me the most, like Burroughs or RAW or Morrison, always talk about such things, changing reality by writing about it. Enforcing your will with words. But my own theory is that the paper one writes on has some sort of magical effect of its own. After all, paper comes from trees, and trees are plants, and we need them to survive. Were it not for plants, we'd all be dead. Therefore they have some type of life-giving property. I realized how important paper was in my life. Were it not for paper, what would I print my books on? What could I write on? What could I draw on? When ideas are put in paper they become more then ideas, they come to life in our 3D reality. For example, a comic book character doesn't really come to life until drawn on a piece of paper or whatever. There must be some weird kind of alchemical marriage between ink and paper or something like that. Where I'm going with this is that as an artist/writer I need paper, which is why I never waste it... Every piece of paper I use I acknowledge the tree that had to be cut down for this. They are one of my magical tools, I suppose.
Anyway, "The Filth" comic book proposed the idea of gardens filled with memetically enhanced soil. From this I got the notion that one could literally create a sort of garden in which one could plant ideas that would eventually "hatch" by manifesting in the "real" world. I thought of some website I had been to called "The Sigil Garden", and how sometimes people use the analogy of planting sigils as seeds in the subconscious. I thought, "Well, why not take the metaphor all the way? Why not actually plant sigils, for real, and see what happens?"
At first it was just a theoretical idea but recently I decided to implement it. Three weeks ago I took a big plastic storage box and filled it up with piles of paper: Blank paper, lined paper, etc. On the top sheet I wrote the word "Soil" in ink. This was my "Desire Garden". Shortly after that I did a sigil. This sigil requires a bit of a backstory. You see, last April I finished up college and one of my last courses was a writing class. There was one female student there who was much like me: We dressed alike, had similiar tastes in art/music, both admired each others work, etc. Anyway to make a long story short I had a crush on her but because I was convinced I was gay at the time I ignored my feelings for her. It was only during the summer that I realized how much I had like dher, so I decided I was actually bisexual. This January I saw here again working at a local bookstore, but I was too cowardly to go talk to her. I felt very shy and intimidated (I had a thread on this in the general chat forum).
Anyway, the sigil I planted was designed to get the two of us in conversation, so it was pretty specific. I literally wrote my statement of intent as: I WILL TALK TO JUDI, got rid of the vowels and repeated letters, and made an image with the remaining ones. For some reason, when I looked at this sigil I just knew that it would work, but I couldn't explain why. Anyway I took this image and drew it on a piece of cardboard cut to look like a seed. This seed of desire I then planted in my paper soil. After this I would stare at the garden everyday and imagine I was watering it with creativity and imagination.
Well, last Monday a week ago I finally spoke to Judi. I won't go into our conversation (it was only 60 seconds and kinda banal) but at least I finally talked to her. It was on the ride back home that I realized "Hey, you got a sigil to work!" You would not believe how much this increased my confidence as a magician. Some may say, "Big deal, you could have talked to her anytime" but I remember it usually helps if the sigil has a pathway to work in (like how you can't do a sigil to win the lottery if you don't buy a lottery ticket first) and maybe you need to start with smaller, easier to do sigils before you work your way up to the big ones.
Maybe I should plant a sigil to improve my body's health while I'm at it. |
